By GLENN COLLINS

Published: April 25, 1995

Correction Appended

So what was it like, one recent evening in supermarket purgatory?

Shoppers squeezed their carts through aisles cluttered with towers of unpacked boxes that blocked the goods on the shelves. Whole shelves yawned emptily, unstocked. Customers waited in lines as checkout clerks doubled as baggers. Spilled milk by the dairy cooler had not been cleaned up. The floors were littered with flattened vegetables and packing materials.

And as if to mock the notion of cleanliness, a clerk maneuvered a broom along the aisles, redistributing the litter instead of cleaning it up.

Was this the scene in some inner-city market? No, the site was a Grand Union store, the sole supermarket in one of Westchester County's most affluent communities, Chappaqua.

A supermarket run by the Publix chain in a middle-class neighborhood in Lakeland, Fla., offered a startling contrast: clutter-free, wide-aisled, spotless and with employees given to friendly chatter and small courtesies. Not only were there grocery baggers, but they asked, "Can I help you out to your car with this?" and then loaded customers' automobiles, declining tips. Instead of staying at the registers, idle checkers ranged into the aisles to urge shoppers into their lanes.

The differences between the stores illustrate the growing disparities in the grocery business that have made customers in many areas of the Northeast the also-rans of supermarket America.

A revolution is transforming the supermarket business in the South and West, where chains are vying to outdo one another, selling grocery shopping as an enjoyable experience. Some chains, like Harris-Teeter of Charlotte, N.C., have made their theatrically lighted and designed stores into a veritable celebration of good living.

But in the suburbs of the New York metropolitan area, with the exception of a few small upscale chains and the larger chains' showcase emporiums, the revolution has yet to arrive. And it is still a rarity in the Northeast.

As a result, much of the population has become inured to poor service. "People put up with conditions that people in the South would not accept," said Gary M. Giblen, a retail expert who is a managing director at Smith Barney. "Anyone who has the opportunity to travel elsewhere in the United States prefers the store conditions elsewhere."

What is the difference between Publix, which operates in the Southeast, and Grand Union, in the Northeast? The answer says something about what it takes to succeed in the supermarket business.

Unlike Grand Union, Publix has capitalized on the availability of low-cost real estate to build newer, larger stores, expanding into markets that are growing, not saturated. Publix enjoys lower labor costs. But perhaps most striking, Publix has used aggressive management and the tenets of employee ownership to create a culture that values efficiency and service.

Customers in the Northeast think they deserve better. "Supermarkets are much more service-oriented in other parts of the country," said Pat Sundel, a nine-year resident of Chappaqua who shops at the Grand Union there and whose father was a supermarket manager in New Hampshire.

In fact, in its most recent survey of 10,000 readers in 1993, the magazine Consumer Reports rated Publix, which is based in Lakeland, the best supermarket chain in America over 23 competitors, excelling in cleanliness, courtesy, checkout speed, produce quality, clear aisles and product variety. The service at Publix is so good that the chain has had to advertise that its prices are competitive, because some customers think it is a luxury chain.

"I get a family feeling here," said Janet Cooley, a shopper whose comments were typical of those of customers at the Lakeland store.

Certainly, some Grand Union customers have good things to say about that chain's supermarkets. But the readers of Consumer Reports rated Grand Union, which is based in Wayne, N.J., next to last, singling it out for below-average cleanliness and checkout speed, higher prices and a lack of variety. The only chain that rated worse was A.& P., which operates in 22 states.

The manager of the Grand Union in Chappaqua declined to comment about the store's operations, and a company spokesman, Donald C. Vaillancourt, would not answer questions about the store.

Mr. Vaillancourt said Grand Union had a rigorous quality-control system. And he said the Consumer Reports rating of the Grand Union chain was "grossly unfair because of its methodology," questioning whether a national sample of 10,000 could adequately reflect the operations of a chain that had an average customer count of three million a week.

The differences between Grand Union and Publix help to produce contrasting financial results for the two chains. Grand Union, which has 234 stores and 17,000 employees in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hampshire, has fallen mightily from its high-flying reputation in the 1970's as one of the first developers of specialty-food products in a supermarket setting.

Correction: April 28, 1995, Friday An article in Business Day on Tuesday, about differences between supermarkets in the Northeast and those in the South and the West, referred incorrectly to George Jenkins, the founder of the Publix supermarket chain. Mr. Jenkins is still alive at age 87, not "the late"; he is chairman emeritus of Publix.